Female Athletes Have Lost Nearly 900 Medals to Trans-Identifying Males Competing in Women’s Sports: UN Report
A United Nations report has revealed that female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to biological male athletes who identify as transgender and compete in women’s sports.
According to the UN study subtitled “Violence against women and girls in sports,” transgender-identifying male athletes have taken 890 from female athletes. Across 29 various sports, over 600 female athletes have lost to male competitors.
“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males,” the report found.
The report was compiled by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, and was presented to the UN General Assembly earlier this month. While it did not specify the exact sporting events or time frame that these loses have occured, it highlighted how policies from international federations and national governing bodies have allowed biological males to compete in women’s sports.
Alsalem noted the obvious inherent advantages male athletes possess, such as higher strength and testosterone levels, which result in a “loss of fair opportunity” for female athletes.
“Some sports federations mandate testosterone suppression for athletes in order to qualify for female categories in elite sports. However, pharmaceutical testosterone suppression for genetically male athletes — irrespective of how they identify — will not eliminate the set of comparative performance advantages they have already acquired,” Alsalem wrote.
“This approach may not only harm the health of the athlete concerned, but it also fails to achieve its stated objective. Therefore, the testosterone levels deemed acceptable by any sporting body are, at best, not evidence-based, arbitrary and asymmetrically favor males,” she continued.
The report adds to the growing concerns voiced by female athletes, who point out that allowing transgender-identifying men to compete in women’s sports is unfair to women and deprives them of opportunities to succeed in their sport.
